Re: Why you'd want a garage:
The most hardcore Mustachians may be shocked at this, but I ALWAYS park my car in the garage, and I get just a little anxious any time I have to leave it parked for multiple days outside. If I ever found myself lacking a garage, I'd build one, move to a place that had one, or just go car-free.
The reason is just preservation of the car. In any climate, the sun will tend to dry out and destroy all the rubber parts (door seals, tires), and it will fade and weaken all the plastic (headlights, taillights, everything in the interior). In Colorado, this all happens in fast forward due to the crazy ultraviolet rays from high altitude and very few cloudy days.
Plus, the repeated thermal expansion/contraction of every part in the car tends to make stuff wear out sooner. CD players get sticky. Condensation messes up electrical connections. Lead-acid batteries wear out faster. This is all functional stuff, since I'm assuming we don't care about what our paint job looks like. But if you DO care, that's an even bigger reason to use a garage.
A car that lives in a garage enjoys a much longer lifespan. Of course, if you've got a really cheap/old car, you might not care as much.. but even my 1999 minivan is new/nice enough that I'm feeling the need to at least rig up a carport roof for it (in its current home under a tree, you should see the collections of leaves, twigs, birdshit and tree sap that pile up on it after a couple of weeks of idle time!).